IROQUOIS, ONTARIO—It’s one thing to
try and imagine how a piece of gear might
fit into a production puzzle. It’s a different
thing altogether to view an entire production
facility on the convention floor to see
exactly how it all comes together.

That is the goal of Ross Video, who will
come to NAB to show how its umbrella of
solutions can be used to bring a production
studio all together.

“We’re going to tailor our production
demonstrations for a live production,” said
Jeff Moore, executive vice president of
sales and marketing for Ross. The company
has planned out a set of solutions-oriented
demos, and will tailor them to news or
sports, or whatever needs are brought by
the person walking into the booth. “We
have [equipment] that all fits under one
umbrella,” Moore said. “If I’m in sports, I’ll
want something different than news or a
house of worship.”

The products in that lineup will include
several new solutions, including a new
virtual set area that will present a triumvirate
of virtual solutions: a hard virtual set,
augmented reality tech and bag of virtual
reality objects. A hard set built by the Philadelphia
firm Erector Set will be attached to
a traditional green screen, creating a continuous
studio. Combined with a virtual environment
as well, “it makes it look like the
studio is five or six times larger than it is,”
Moore said. “For a lot of broadcasters, that’s
interesting because they can build an environment
that has the best of both worlds
and have them work seamlessly together.”

The set is run by virtually all of Ross’
product lines: robotic cameras, graphics,
production switchers and servers, with the
whole thing wrapped up neatly with automation,
Moore said.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Holding up this environment will be
products like the Carbonite series of control
panels, as well as the
Vision series of production
switchers and MC1 master
control system.

The company has also
been wading into social
media, with last year’s introduction
of its Inception
social media management module, which
offers a single tool to create and publish
content into live broadcast productions.

Ross will also showcase the workflow
advantages of its XPression motion graphics
system. “Broadcast groups and networks
need to be able to efficiently create
and get graphics where you need them,”
Moore said. New features include a new effects
engine and enhanced data integration
known as “DataLinq.”

For behind-the-scenes work, Ross will
also introduce a new Nielsen rating encoder,
the NWE-TS, that acts as a baseband encoder
and compressed domain encoder, as well as
new openGear signal processing solutions
and the NK series of routers. The company
is also showing v14.0 of its OverDrive automated
production control system, which
now has a re-engineered newsroom plug-in
to streamline the prep process.

After the company’s acquisition of two
robotics firms last year, the company will
come to the show with its Furio track-based
system and CamBot robotic pedestal system.
The company has more to celebrate,
too, after the founder of the company, John
Ross, was awarded the Order of Canada, the
highest civilian honor in the nation for his
achievements in engineering.